Add Dan Severn’s name to the list of former fighters appalled with the rapid developments in performance enhancing drugs (PEDs).
The UFC Halle of Famer did not limit his complaints to MMA. He believes “freak” athletes are being designed for most sports, including basketball.
“Today, if you wanted to make Frankenstein, you really could make Frankenstein,” Severn told Submission Radio. “You could take a seven-foot tall basketball frame of a body, and put them on the right chemicals, and put them through the right type of training, you could build a freak-a-saurus that weighs probably three to four hundred pounds and will destroy anything that climbs into the cage with it. But did it win on its own ability? No.”
Just in the span of the last few months, there have been a variety of UFC fighters who have tested positive for PEDs, including Chael Sonnen, Ali Bagautinov, Brian Ortega and Mike King. With a slew of drug users learning the hard way about the disadvantages of their drug use, Severn prides himself on never approaching that way of life.
“To start a career at the age I did, with the success ratio that I had; and the fact is, I can claim lifetime chemical free status. You find another heavyweight that can claim that, he does not walk this planet. I know most of these groups and organizations. I probably know most of their suppliers, only because I’m also involved in the gym industry for quite a few years and I’ve been around steroids, growth hormones all my entire life, I just never bothered to cross the line to go into it, cause I’ve had some groups approach me and say ‘Dan Severn on your national physical shape and size, we can take your 260 pound frame and we could probably put you up to about three and a quarter (pounds), ripped at about six percent body fat, you’d have 25 to 30 percent more power.’
“To me it’s like, bottom line is there Denis and Kacper, I take a great deal of pride in the fact that I have achieved all my success on my own ability. I didn’t have to take a shot, I didn’t have to take a pill, I just simply walked out there and I got the job done.”
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